Record Mirror was a British weekly music newspaper. It competed with New Musical Express, Disc & Music Echo, Sounds, and Melody Maker, but had the smallest circulation of the UK consumer music weeklies and was considered to be the least important of the genre. The first ever UK album chart was published in Record Mirror in 1956. It ceased publication in April 1991, with sister publication Sounds closing in the same week. (Only NME survives today.) (wikipedia)

"There are still about twelve Mothers LP's in the can", he winked, "we did a lot of stuff.

The Bizarre label had several provisions in it concerning recordings other than the Mothers. These extra releases had to be approved and I heeded a vehicle to dispose of the material I wanted to put out, so the answer was Straight Records (first releases are albums by Alice Cooper, Judy Henske & Jerry Yester and Captain Beefheart at last on a legitimate label). In the States, I'm starting a T.V. programme, but I will include the musical things I've wanted to introduce as well. For guests, I have compiled a list and possible first choices are Hubert Humphrey, Captain Kangaroo and Mick Jagger. A lot of it will be political, because that is how you supply the best in comedy." (read more)

(1) A lot of the underground acts don't care about making a hit record. They're interested in artistic expression. The underground sounds are raw. But the Industry should remember that the music sounds that way because of the environment the kids live in.

They are a different kind of person. Some of their bodies are chemically altered and they have leisure-time activities that would be very foreign to record company executives. They have a concept of music as an art. Most A and R people don't know anything about music, but look for the commercial potential.

You should care about the artistic merit. You call our music noise, but don't bother to look underneath it for the chords or melody lines. You don't understand the underground's music – there is definitely a musical generation gap. (read more)

FRANK ZAPPA sauntered in, poured himself into the chair at the front of the room, folded his arms, crossed his legs and assumed the appearance of an effeminate librarian.

He aimed his nose and stared down it, appraising the curious faces assembled to cross-examine him at the press conference. The Groucho Marx whiskers twitched nervously, but the cemented gaze was unaffected. (read more)

TO THE great grey mass of the general public, Frank Zappa is a bad man suspected of corrupting the morals of our Youth and the perpetrator of musical obscenities from a great height with the aid of his evil crew, the Mothers of Invention.

He is, to a misguided mass, a freak, weirdo or charlatan and they, of course, arrive at this conclusion without ever having met the man or made any attempt to understand his motivation. (read more)